Seven Times Aife Saved Harry (And the One Time She Really Meant To)
by Ithileon
Summary: Alias Aife raises Harry and the consequences therein.


**First attempt at crack!fic. Be kind.**

The first time Aife saved Harry, it was completely by accident. The succubus had been minding her own business, meandering down a sidewalk in a London park when suddenly she had her hands full of squalling four-year-old. Between cries and hiccups she was able to learn the boy's name was Harry Potter and he was running from his mean cousin. The sight of the unhappy child hit Aife hard; she hadn't seen her little Ysabeau in so long. Well if the cousin was mean, it likely meant the parents were too. Ignoring the little voice that said she was kidnapping a child, she asked if Harry wanted to stay with her instead. Not surprisingly he agreed, and a lot of string pulling, one rampant enthralling spree and some shameless seduction later, Aife became Harry's guardian. He had his own room, his own clothes, his own toys, and his own books. Then he started calling her Mama, and Aife decided she could be a good mother.

She learned Harry was a wizard shortly after an attempt at something called blood adoption, when an owl flew through the window and informed her of her status as magical guardian and something about a Gringott's Bank account. The goblins seemed happy to see her, not that she could interpret goblin body language that well, and she reviewed the financial records. There were few changes that needed to be made, and a few new investments, but otherwise the money was fine.

The second time Aife saved Harry was seven years later, when an owl flew through the window bearing an acceptance letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A nice, if dim, half-giant named Hagrid appeared to take the pair on a tour of Diagon Alley. Their trip to Gringotts revealed something odd: a small package inside a rather large and empty vault. Impulsive, Aife snatched it out of Hagrid's pocket and placed it in her own bag.

She received plenty of letters from Harry that year, letters about his housemates and his friends and possible rivals. An accident led to the discovery that the strange stone was a tool of alchemy, and the only alchemists she knew of were the Flamels. She struck up a correspondence with them before delivering the stone in person. They were pleased to get it back, though furious with Dumbledore for some reason.

The third time Aife saved Harry was, again, in Diagon Alley. One Lucius Malfoy tried to slip something into redhead's cauldron. Key word tried, as Aife's touch was enough to convince him to yield it to her. She spent part of the year writing in it, wringing the secrets from the diary apparently without its knowledge. Who knew Thomas Marvolo Riddle just needed someone to listen? He gave her everything she needed to know, including how to find and destroy his horcruxes. Unfortunately she didn't have a basilisk's venom, nor did she have Fiendfyre. That would take a wizard, a wizard of considerable skill. That knocked out the twelve-year-old Harry, who again sent plenty of letters about his classes, updates about his friends, rivals, and Quidditch. At the end of the year Dumbledore seemed disappointed, which was peculiar. Oh, and Harry came home with an excitable house elf called Dobby.

The fourth time Aife saved Harry was the summer before his third year, when a man named Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban. Aife invited the scraggly dog onto the property to give him a bath and a haircut. Then she invited him into the house for food and water. Then the dog turned into a man and she cracked him over the head with a baseball bat. It took an hour to get the full story, about the real secret keeper and being thrown into Azkaban without a trial and the horrors of the Dementors, the very things that were being sent to Hogwarts to "protect" the students, specifically Harry.

Aife derailed part of that plan by enrolling Harry in a one-year exchange program in a smaller school in Canada. Though unhappy about it, he agreed to participate. In the meantime Aife spoke with the goblins at Gringott's to figure out what to do about Sirius. Some obscure clause in Gringotts gave Sirius access to the Lestrange and Malfoy vaults, which he emptied and then closed. A strange goblet from the Lestrange vault was sitting in a room with the old diary, and Aife forbade anyone from entering. As for Sirius, he ended up with a room in Aife's house, and when Harry asked if they were dating they vehemently denied it. They were just allies. With benefits. They did not tell him what those benefits were, though he'd apparently asked someone at his new school and spent Christmas giving them funny looks.

At the end of the year Ron Weasley's pet rat disappeared. No one gave this much thought.

Aife and Sirius took the werewolf Remus Lupin to task over never trying to get in touch with Harry, shot down his excuses, and Sirius watched with a straight face while Aife cracked Lupin over the head . . . with the same baseball bat. The pair decided he'd have to earn their trust before they let him near their legal ward and godson, respectively. Though Lupin lost his job at the year's end, he returned to Aife's mansion in triumph. He'd managed to nick much of the contents of the Room of Requirements, including a strange tiara. His room was just down the hall from Sirius, part of the basement was enhanced for his transformations, and a tunnel was dug from it to the outside, where Mooney and Padfoot could run to their hearts' content.

The fifth time Aife saved Harry was the summer before fourth year, when she learned enough about name magic and learned about the Tri-Wizard Tournament. There was this goblet of fire that was used to select a trio of champions who competed for the honor of their school, a thousand galleons, and probably a trophy. Given Dumbledore's previously peculiar behavior, namely his disappointment at the end of Harry's first three years of schooling, Aife had a bad feeling that he might try something. So after shouting Sirius down, she legally changed Harry's surname to McCorrigan and enrolled him permanently in the Canadian school.

So when the Goblet of Fire spat out the name Harry Potter, using a scrap of parchment from a second year assignment, nothing happened. Harry never showed up, nor did he loose his magic. The French ministry chewed out Dumbledore for kidnapping a minor from a prominent family and then nearly getting said minor and her sister killed in a task. Voldemort had to use Diggory to resurrect himself because Potter never made it.

Right before Easter, the Gaunt shack was torched to the ground. The case was never solved, but sightings of the Barghest led most to assume evil spirits were involved. At the same time, Remus Lupin and Aife McCorrigan left behind a smoking wreck of a cave, the succubus twirling a locket around her hand. She decided fiendfyre was a very good thing, especially when she egged on the one casting it. Lupin was staring at his wand as if he'd never seen it before; he'd effortlessly torched inferi left, right, and center.

The sixth time Aife saved Harry was, as was becoming normal, the summer before his fifth year. Apparently the Daily Prophet was running a smear campaign against her son, citing his transfer from Hogwarts and being a no-show at the Tri-Wizard. Remus offered several good prank ideas, as did Sirius, and she ended up using one of his. She bankrupted the paper shortly before August, then decided she hadn't ruffled enough feathers and transferred Harry's Gringott's account to a bank in Switzerland that was run by gnomes. The Black account followed within two days, as did the pittance in Remus' vault.

While Harry was at school, Sirius discovered that the locket was a fake placed by his brother Regulus. After a bout of vehement cursing and promises of revenge that had Remus blushing and Aife nearly vibrating with want, he decided he would go back to his old house and strip it from top to bottom. He didn't arrive there for three days, as Aife had locked them both in her bedroom.

He got to torch the place once the valuables had been removed, and returned several hundred galleons richer, toting the proper locket, and carrying a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. This time it was a week before Remus saw them again.

Harry came home for Christmas to discover his godfather was engaged to his mother. That Aife would have to sleep with others in order to feed would be ignored, and Sirius' emotional declaration that he knew she would outlive him by centuries but would devote the rest of his years to her brought the succubus to tears.

The seventh time Aife saved Harry involved seducing and then intoxicating a Naga, to lure the resurrected Voldemort's snake away from him. The snake Nagini was stunned repeatedly by Sirius, Remus and Harry while Aife flipped through a book of rituals designed to contain fiendfyre.

Sirius smirked like a maniac when he heard a voice behind him scoff and say, "Well bugger this!"

Remus kept hitting the snake with stunners until Sirius found a location with little extra fuel for fiendfyre. One by one, the horcruxes were laid out, the snake's body marking the boundary of a circle. Sirius gleefully set them alight, immolating them one by one. That was supposed to leave only one piece of soul remaining: the one sustaining Voldemort. But when Harry collapsed with a cry of pain, his scar inflamed, Aife's expression would have frightened a Valkyrie. Remus cowered behind Sirius, who actually _whimpered_.

The eighth and final time Aife saved Harry involved a quick trip to the gnomes for a soul-extracting ritual and hiring a Valkyrie assassin. The ritual went off without a hitch. The Valkyrie situation did not.

Her name was Tamsin, a blue-green eyed blonde who was five feet and ten inches of bad attitude. Sirius' comment that the Valkyries once rode wolves instead of horses and maybe she was single was not appreciated, but before the blonde in question could strike, the bat he'd become very familiar with since moving in came zooming down the hall and struck him between the eyes.

Aife squeezed Harry too tightly and cried, "I am _so_ proud of you!"

Remus bowed to Tamsin and apologized on his friend's behalf. She did not accept, nor did she kill anyone present, which did not inspire confidence in the werewolf. Payment was agreed upon and the Valkyrie departed.

Two weeks later she returned, carrying the head of Voldemort in a burlap sack. What followed was two hours of Aife trying to raise Tamsin's payment, and the blonde left the house with double the gold she'd been promised and a standing invitation to visit them any time. It was several years before the succubus and the Valkyrie would cross paths again.

A few years later, Harry settled down with a nice witch from the Canadian school. Remus ended up with a wolf shifter named Ellie, and she was the only one to literally snap him out of his woe-is-me-I'm-cursed funk. Now he actually liked being a werewolf. Sirius quit chasing women after Aife threatened to castrate him, and he was just tactful enough not to mention her affairs. And they were all very happy . . . until Bo showed up and Aife went insane.

**I regret nothing.**


End file.
